


“How different, how very different, from the home life of our own dear Queen!”

by Anonymous



Category: A Study in Emerald - Neil Gaiman, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Community: holmestice, Drama, Horror, Lovecraftian, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-01
Updated: 2018-01-01
Packaged: 2019-02-26 02:38:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13226391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: The tall man and the limping doctor continue their work in Albion.





	“How different, how very different, from the home life of our own dear Queen!”

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Trobadora](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trobadora/gifts).



> Inspired by Trobadora's prompts for A Study in Emerald, but I'm not going to quote them here because they would be spoilers.

( _Being a reprint from the reminiscences of_ John H. Watson, M.D., _late of the Army Medical Department._ )  
  
( _Additional commentary from Jim Moriarty, consulting criminal._ )  
  
Over the course of these memoirs with which I have endeavoured to preserve and to perhaps justify the actions to which we were driven, I frequently find my pen stumbling, afraid to implicate those who have showed us kindness along the way, or the innocents who unknowingly provided assistance to our cause. Even now, setting pen to paper is a reckless act that may have unforeseen results and I am reluctant to soil my hands with more human blood. On the other hand, memories of that time are unstable and competing narratives have driven away truth, so I feel obligated to accurately chronicle the actions of Mr Sherlock Holmes and my own as well.  
  
Our first attempt at creating the spell had failed. The prince was of royal blood, but it had been diluted by the human, so he could not help us fulfil our purpose. There were other, more deleterious consequences to that adventure. We were forced to flee from the warmth and bonhomie of the Strand Players into the vilest streets and rookeries, where we were crowded into filthy rooms with the other unfortunates who were drawn into the great cesspool of London. In the wretchedness of Bethnal Green the rotten houses leaned against each other like drunkards keeping one another from tumbling into the gutter. We found a perilous freedom there in dark rooms where few policemen dared to tread.  
  
The months passed, and while we struggled to keep the clarity of our minds, I became accustomed to my friend’s decrepit movements and age-ravaged face, and had no mirror with which to judge the mask with which I faced the world. One morning, we were roused from our uneasy slumber by the clatter of boots and truncheons.  
  
“They’re looking for a lad what coshed a lady on Boundary Street,” a toothless denizen muttered as he scuttled away to find a new refuge.  
  
A group of young constables marched in, followed by Inspector Lestrade, a bright-eyed man with the overly confident air of the patent medicine purveyor. He surveyed us, taking in our grimy rags and smudged faces with cheerful contempt.  
  
“Is this the best you can do? This lot haven’t been lads in many a year.” He let out a short, mirthless laugh. “Step lively, this case is our priority now the royal murder’s solved. Sad to say, the credit’s not mine on that one—Gregson it was who found the Norwegian fellow and got him to confess. Safe to say, he’s wishing he’d never seen the inside of a theatre, him nor the doctor neither. At least we think that was the doctor. Shot his face off, didn’t he, when he knew it was Scotland Yard at the door. There’s many a suspect who longs for death even before the Interrogation begins. Remember that, lads.” He laughed coarsely, and indicated that his constables should follow him out the door.  
  
Holmes kept his tall frame hunched into age and poverty until the last echo of boots faded from our hearing and we were alone.  
  
“Lestrade has thrown his heart into this dangerous game, but his acting would barely pass muster in the lowest music hall,” he said.  
  
“Who was the man Inspector Gregson arrested?” I asked.  
  
“It’s not the first time Gregson has solved a case by arresting the first plausible foreigner he can find. It’s not as if they are capable of lodging a complaint once the Interrogation has finished. In the past…” Holmes stopped, and his face twisted in pain as he tried to recall obscured memories. “It is time to complete our work,” he said.  
  
I felt a cold thrill at the thought of what was before us. “I’m ready,” I said. So many memories were buried or lost, but I would always remember the darkness in that room in Shoreditch and the way my hands never hesitated even as the noxious fumes tried to overwhelm us both.  
  
As if he were hearing my thoughts, Holmes replied, “Success will change everything, Watson, and it will change nothing.”  
  


\---

I’m not in this story much, Jim remarked. I do hope you’re not leading to some sort of moral. What makes fairy tales _brilliant_ is that people often die in them for no reason at all.  


\---

We moved far from London, to a village where the sharpness of the sea air would be a constant reminder of our task. My friend is a painter, I said, recently returned from a tour of the New World and eager to re-acquaint himself with the beauties of Albion, and I am a writer. The curiosity of the villagers about the strangers in their midst faded as they watched us work at our declared professions. The village newspaper even printed one of my poems, a historical fancy where our good and terrible Queen herself blessed our land with a punctual railway system.  
  
Some said that they had come from the sea, others claimed that they had come from nowhere, that they had always been with us, gracing humanity with their incomprehensible version of pity and love. I shook my head to dissipate the tendrils of confusion I felt snaking through my mind, attempting to rewrite the fragile reality I had discovered. Seven years, I whispered to myself.  
  
Holmes painted every day, delicate, precise brushstrokes against a sheet of thin vellum. A single mistake, an errant flick of paint, and all would be lost.  
  
“It is beautiful,” I said, “But the time—”  
  
“It is not possible to work any faster,” he said. “These spells were meant to be cast over a series of years as the moon waxed and waned.”  
  
We were both silent at the thought. We didn’t have years; in fact, we had already outlived the others who had started with us on this path.  
  
“Time is its own magic, especially when it comes to art. In my own family,” Holmes could not continue. I felt it as well, the mind-fog, the miasma that descended whenever one tried to remember the time before their arrival. Before the Conquest.  
  
There is no before, it said. We are here, in the air, in the sea, in the stars.  
  
Holmes was asked to show some of his paintings in a local art gallery, and he agreed. It would be suspicious to refuse such an honour, he said, but I did feel that a part of him enjoyed public acclaim and was looking forward to seeing his alias displayed on the gallery wall. He set aside his true work for a week, and created a series of landscapes, with lush green hills leading down to a distant sea, and castles decaying picturesquely under the rosy moonlight.  
  
We arrived at the gallery early and were greeted by the owner, brimming with excitement. She was a small woman with a sweet face and the kind of healthy complexion that comes from living in the country, a combination that rarely can be found in the artistic crowd in London. “A critic from _The Star_ is here, Mr Hope,” she said.  
  
Holmes assumed a welcoming expression, but our blood ran cold as we recognised the tall, pale man who was making his way towards us, without glancing at the paintings on the wall. He had the pleased intensity of a viper who has found the warm-blooded creature he was hunting.  
  
He greeted us cordially, “Mr Hope, and Doctor…”  
  
“I’m afraid there’s some misunderstanding, I’m not a doctor,” I said.  
  
“My mistake,” he replied in a tone that suggested he never made mistakes.  
  
He introduced himself, his real name, not the one he had given to the gallery owner. As he spoke, I felt it again, stronger, opposing visions of reality competing in my mind.  
  
“Shall we retire to someplace more private?” he asked, holding my friend’s gaze.  
  
“I see no need for further discussion. All that I have to say has already crossed your mind,” Holmes replied.  
  
I reached into my pocket, but of course my revolver had been left behind in the study. I’d seen no need for it at an art gallery.  
  
“It is just as well your weapon was left at home today,” Professor Moriarty said. “I have an associate who is keeping his rifle aimed at your head. You can’t see him, but I can assure you that he is well within range and never misses.” He turned back to Holmes.  
  
“As long as you maintain your quiet retirement in the country, then I see no need to announce your presence to the greater world. My employers might find it mildly embarrassing as you have already been arrested and died in custody.”  
  
The professor raised his hand, a signal to his invisible companion rather than a gesture of farewell, and we watched him as he spoke to the gallery owner before making his way outside.  
  
“The professor is the most intelligent and logical man I have ever encountered,” Holmes said. “He’s read my work, he’s made his own observations, and he knows that the world as we see it makes no sense. Our rulers consider us as little more than cattle, why would they bring us the blessings of civilisation? Trains, telegraphs, cities full of light, these are human inventions. Time stopped seven years ago…” He repeated his words, louder, letting them battle the miasma that obscured the mind. “It has been seven years.”  
  
“Seven years,” I agreed.  
  
“It has been seven years since we were invaded. Seven years, not seven hundred.”  
  
His words cleared the last of the miasma from my mind. It was the truth that could change everything, but might change nothing.  
  
“We must act quickly, Watson. Time is on their side, not ours.”  
  
Holmes painted furiously, back straight, eyes fixed on the an image that only he remembered, a series of sigils and strange letters he had discovered in the early days, when our glorious and monstrous Queen had not yet poisoned the minds of her subjects into passivity. He painted for hours, until finally, seeing his brush begin to falter, I forced him to take some refreshment and allow his eyes to close.  


\---

  
Do you solve any crimes in this story? You don’t? How boring. Funny isn’t it? The only thing more boring than you solving crimes is you not solving crimes.  


\---

Holmes and I returned to London looking like ourselves. It was a relief after months in rags, followed months of bohemian dress to wear a decent coat again.  
  
The hansom took us to the Diogenes Club, a deserted structure on Pall Mall. London was spotted with places like this, expensive addresses that stood empty year after year, superstitiously avoided as the scene of a tragedy that had been lost. Our footsteps echoed in the silent halls as the dust glittered in the weak sunlight.  
  
“Did you ever meet my brother?” Holmes asked.  
  
I tried to remember, but like so many things from the time before the Conquest, the memory was lost.  
  
“Remembering my brother has helped me retain my other memories,” Holmes said. “After we lost, they brought in the government workers one by one. Some, like my brother didn’t come out again. I know this happened, yet it feels less real than the false image of him dying when I was at school or simply never existing at all. Seven years.”  
  
“Seven years, not seven hundred,” I said. We repeated it to ourselves day and night, repeated it whenever memories started to fade. I grew up in a different London, with different colours and unexpected summer rains and a bright yellow moon admiring its twin in the river. There were Sundays, rows of boys at school, mouthing hymns, counting the minutes until they were free to do as liked under a brilliant, cloudless sky. Before I die, I want to see that London again—I want to walk through the crowds, alive and purely human, until I reach green edges and solitude.  
  
Inspector Lestrade was waiting for us in the library. He was pacing up and down, taking books from the shelves, and discarding them without a glance.  
  
“Is it ready?” he asked, too impatient to be bothered by formal greetings.  
  
“My dear Inspector, you had better have a glass to steady your nerves. If Watson here has noticed your pallor and shaky hands, you won’t last a minute in the palace. That bookcase hides a stash of bottles and glasses, kept for the occasions when members could not even bring themselves to communicate with one of the stewards.”  
  
The cabinet creaked as Lestrade unfastened the latch. He coughed a little from the dust, but he managed to find some brandy and the glasses. His hands were noticeably shaky as he poured out the drinks.  
  
“In my brother’s time, not even the slightest sound was tolerated in this room. The hinges on that cupboard moved without a whisper, and your coughing fit would have ended your membership.” Holmes smiled, and I wondered which London he wanted to find.  
  
“Your brother, a larger man, wasn’t he? I think I met him once.” Lestrade said suddenly. The brandy had revived him.  
  
“The spell.” Holmes took out the vellum that had occupied his days and nights and carefully unfolded it on the table. It might have been a trick of the light, but it looked the symbols on the page were moving, breathing.  
  
“Watson, the knife.”  
  
I took out a slender dagger that I had bought in a market outside Peshawar, but had never used. In the work Holmes and I had pursued together, I preferred more professional tools.  
  
Lestrade picked up the dagger and touched it to the tip of his finger; a bright dot of blood appeared.  
  
“The man who sold it to me said it was hungry,” I explained, as Lestrade sucked on the end of his finger reproachfully.  
  
“You’re clear on what you need to do?” Holmes asked.  
  
“Once I’m in the throne room, I take out this paper, and say I need to show it to HER. Then I stab whatever bit of HER I can reach with the knife, making sure to get my blood on the paper as well as HERS. The paper lights up or explodes.”  
  
“Something like that,” Holmes said.  
  
“And in the ensuing confusion, I make my escape,” Lestrade said, unhappily.  
  
“There will be confusion. The miasma that has been robbing us of memories will lift. Everything will change.”  
  
“Or nothing may change,” I added.  
  
“The knife has some symbolic value, but your gun would work as well if you’re allowed to take it in and if you feel more comfortable using it,” Holmes said.  
  
Lestrade shrugged and wrapped the dagger in his handkerchief.  
  
We all heard it then, the soft creak of a door with hinges that had not been oiled in seven years. I took the dagger from Lestrade and slipped it into my pocket.  
  
Professor Moriarty, erstwhile theatrical producer and art critic, stepped into the room. His unnatural movements were more pronounced, and his eyes shone with a dark triumph.  
  
“This place is surrounded. Not by your men, Inspector. Your men are currently undergoing the Interrogation to see how well-informed they were about the actions of their superior. I think you should join them.”  
  
Three men wearing a uniform I had not seen before came in and surrounded Inspector Lestrade, who appeared dazed and barely aware of the handcuffs they fastened around his wrist.  
  
Moriarty moved closer. “They are eager to speak with you as well, but I was hoping for a little conversation before your Interrogation. You interest me greatly, and I do believe that under other circumstances…” He picked up the vellum and examined it closely.  
  
“Superstitious nonsense,” he said dismissively, before putting it in his pocket. “Even so, I believe that your Interrogation should be undertaken by the Great One herself.”  
  


\---

Jim’s eyes shone with a familiar dark triumph. I think the story should end there, with me winning, he said. 

\---

  
On the way to the palace, Holmes and Moriarty did not speak of the events that had brought them together that day. Instead, they began a discussion which was too abstruse for me to relate here. It had been a long time since I had heard Holmes converse with such passion, and as the professor responded, he almost appeared to be a warm-blooded creature after all.  
  
Moriarty’s companion was silent and he kept his gun pointed at Holmes. His face looked familiar to me, and I remembered Holmes saying he had been in Afghanistan. So much of my time there was lost, but it is possible our paths had crossed in that distant country.  
  
My stomach turned as the carriage took us through the gates. The palace was clearly not built for human habitation, with walls meeting at odd angles and without a single window to break up the vastness of the façade. It was both disorientating and reassuring, and I found myself wanting to believe in whatever it represented. Seven years, not seven hundred, I whispered to myself, and I saw my friend’s lips moving as well, quietly at first, and then he directly addressed our captor.  
  
“Professor, you are fully aware that the research you did at the beginning of your career cannot be reconciled with your post-Conquest research. This is why you resigned your academic post and relocated to London.”  
  
“Why did I leave the university? The same reason most professors do, too many students.” The professor’s lips moved slightly; in anyone else this might have suggested an attempt at a smile.  
  
We were greeted by a group of men in the strange uniforms, who spoke to the professor in low, respectful tones. We couldn’t hear his words, but they kept glancing at us, fear in their eyes. They surrounded us and escorted us in to the presence of Her Majesty. The professor’s sullen friend kept his gun trained on Holmes.  
  
The Queen, vast in the darkness, moved and I felt an alien presence scratching at the edge of my thoughts, demanding entrance. I cried out, and I saw Holmes standing very still, all of his efforts concentrated on breathing. I tried to catch his eye, but he was staring at the professor, who was returning his gaze with an intensity that was confusing. Finally, Professor Moriarty looked away and addressed the Queen.  
  
“This is a written confession from these traitors, names and all the places where they have betrayed you.” He unfolded the painted vellum he had taken from us earlier. He walked toward the Queen, and then stopped.  
  
The buzzing intensified and I felt as if my head would split into pieces with its fury at human betrayal. One of the Queen’s massive limbs moved in the professor’s direction as if beckoning him to come closer.  
  
The professor stepped forward, nodded at his friend, and then fell into the Queen’s embrace. A shot rang out, tearing through the professor and piercing our monarch, mixing pure Royal blood and human blood and sparking the lines on the vellum to a fiery life. The darkness shattered, reformed, and intensified as the Queen screamed in anger, but for the first time in seven years, my mind was clear.  
  


\---

Jim reached out and softly stroked Sherlock’s cheek.  
  
I love how you believe I can be brave, Jim said. Thank you for trying to save me. You never will—I fall, you rise, but thank you. You were worried that nothing would change, but we both know everything changed. Everything changed, and here we are.


End file.
